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More German than many Germans

mertbulan.com

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Re: More German than many Germans

#3

Post by Akashic101 »

As a German I am super happy to hear that you are having such a good time in my, or now our, country. So often the news focus only on the bad things which sometimes blinds me on how nice people can be to each other and help each other out as one big community.

Re: More German than many Germans

#5

Post by schmorptron »

What a nice and heartwarming read! I'm german, and really hope we can pivot away from the rise of the far right. How that can be done, I don't know. I just hope we can do so before we start scaring away people like him who would otherwise come here, decide they like it, become germans, and end up making it a better place for everyone.

(Part of it is I think we should make it easier and more incentivized to learn the language early so not just people in english-dominated tech jobs can have a positive experience. Cold start problem. It shouldn't be too hard for the gov to commission a RosettaStone like german learning app ((suboptimal, i know)) that works somewhat well and give it out for free, right?)

But a struggling economy, questionable planning for many years now, the "educated middle class" he mentioned in the post shrinking don't bode well for it. It's a prime breeding ground for scapegoat politics. It's probably one of the cognitive "exploits" in the human mind, that finding a scapegoat (the foreigners) to blame for everything being such an effective tool to rally people with grievances behind yourself and slowly turning them into hateful monsters.

Re: More German than many Germans

#6

Post by tchalla »

On rules - they certainly create clarity and also have the potential to enable NPC like behaviour which is all too common. Since you mentioned Traffic Light Coalition, the chancellor Olaf Scholz (who is a lawyer and was also the ex-mayor of Hamburg) recently said in an interview “Germany was known to be a country of engineers, we are now a country of lawyers”.

Hamburg along side with Munich is what Germany should look like. So I think Hamburg has played a role in your perception too.

Re: More German than many Germans

#8

Post by petesergeant »

tchalla wrote: post #6

On rules - they certainly create clarity and also have the potential to enable NPC like behaviour which is all too common. Since you mentioned Traffic Light Coalition, the chancellor Olaf Scholz (who is a lawyer and was also the ex-mayor of Hamburg) recently said in an interview “Germany was known to be a country of engineers, we are now a country of lawyers”. Hamburg along side with Munich is what Germany should loo…

UK and Australia are also very rule-loving and have their own problems, but not the same disease you’re describing here.
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